Marching to spring is no easy passage

Star-Ledger file photoIn March, early flowers such as the crocus push up from the groudn and risk being coated in snow.T.S. Eliot claimed “April is the cruelest month,” but I think he got it wrong.

March is by far the more pitiless span of weeks, caught on the cusp of winter and spring. March is mostly stick and precious little carrot. It batters you with the last blasts of harsh winter weather, again and again, unreliable to the last day.

March gets your hopes up with hints of the kinder, milder days ahead — then nips those hopes with yet another spell of bone-chilling cold. One day, you’ll be basking in real warmth in front of a sunny window, and the next day you’ll be kindling a fire in the hearth to ward off the cold.

March is capricious and arbitrary, and often mean. If it’s not the final slap of snow, it’s the grim fury of nor’easters, like the one that slammed the state last weekend. Never forget that New Jersey’s worst epic storm, the one that cut new ocean inlets through our barrier beaches in 1962, was the spawn of March.

It’s a roller-coaster ride of hope and weary resignation. March makes you sigh. March makes you tired.

It’s the ugliest month, too, sodden and strewn with debris, dreary and brown. March is trashy, with odd bits of garbage emerging from the snowdrifts. It’s unkempt and littered with fallen branches.

High winter at least holds the possibility of fresh snow glistening on every branch, covering the contours of the land in a pristine blanket. It’s a charming fairyland — until you have to shovel it aside. The temperatures might be brutally cold, but the sunny days have a sharp, clean clarity.

March is more often than not cloud-bound and brooding. The flat, gray light of a chilly March day flatters no one and the rawness in the air is unpleasant. The ground squelches underfoot, saturated with rain and snowmelt. The landscape is still barren.

None of this is pretty. Pretty hasn’t happened yet. It’s March.

It’s true that the official start of spring is in just two days. But there’s a big difference between the first day of spring and the first spring day.

It must be coming, though. I’ve seen signs and heard rumors. The pointy noses of bulb sprouts are pushing up in full confidence of better days ahead. And I thought I saw a red-winged blackbird the other day. The end is in sight, surely.

But you can’t trust March. We could have another blizzard any day.

Even the name of this month suggests a long, hard slog. March tends to last far too long, in contrast, say, to the brevity of June, sweet June. It’s tough to enjoy March – you can only endure it.

At least we’re halfway through, with only two more weeks to go. About all you can say for March is that inevitably it will be over, and we will have once again made the pilgrimage from winter to spring. It’s no easy passage.

Think of how spring moves painlessly into summer, and summer yields gracefully to fall. It is only the annual passage from winter to spring that proceeds in fits and jerks, defined by false promises and harsh disappointments.

I suppose something has to come between February and April. I admit that void is filled adequately by March. I concede that March is necessary. But I don’t have to like it.